What is Somatic Massage?
Okay, so you’ve come this far and you’ve heard of somatics or somatic therapy—SOMETHING. But what is it?
“Soma,” in Latin and Ancient Greek, means “body.” Therefore, “somatics” is having to do with the body.
Though that explanation is simple, it doesn’t really tell us much, does it?
Let’s dig a little deeper. According to Healthline, “Somatics describes any practice that uses the mind-body connection to help you survey your internal self and listen to signals your body sends about areas of pain, discomfort, or imbalance. These practices allow you to access more information about the ways you hold on to your experiences in your body.” The term “somatics” as its used here was coined by a philosopher and educator named Thomas Hanna who basically created the field. Interestingly, Hanna’s career brought him to our very own University of Florida in the mid-late sixties and early seventies before taking him to California to found a collegiate program in Functional Integration and work with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.
All of that is pretty dry and doesn’t really explain what somatic massage is, though, right? Many somatic therapists, following Hanna’s philosophy, work with what they call “somatic movement,” which basically works on helping clients get to know their bodies and develop self-awareness of their bodies and how they feel; this can include yoga, tai chi, and other gentle movement exercises as well as breath-work and meditation exercises.
Somatic massage, by contrast, uses massage services performed by a licensed massage therapist to not only help build that self-awareness of a client’s body and how it feels to exist in that hunk of flesh, but also to release stored muscle tension and fascial restrictions that develop due to chronic anxiety, depression, and other mental health struggles related to trauma.
SOMATICS
Somatic massage is an excellent complement to your foundational mental healthcare of choice.
So here’s the deal: our nervous system is the computer running our body. Our brain sends signals all over our bodies to tell it what to do and when. Unfortunately, those of us who have suffered from past trauma, neurodivergence, and other chronic mental health issues, also suffer from a sometimes overactive and/or dysfunctional nervous system. Our brain may tell our body that it needs to activate the sympathetic nervous system—the one that controls our fight-flight-freeze response—way too often. When our sympathetic nervous system is activated, signals from our brain get sent out all over our body to get ready for anything, which means our muscles tense up in anticipation of needing to be activated very quickly for survival.
Over time, our muscles get so used to constantly being in that ready-for-anything state that they just stay tense all the time. As a result, people who suffer from chronic anxiety, trauma, and even people who are neurodivergent have an extremely difficult time fully relaxing their bodies, even when they think about it and try to become more aware of it. These people’s bodies have developed a new “homeostasis” that includes chronic tension throughout the body and can contribute to other health issues beyond mental ones.
If you fit into this category and find yourself actively trying to relax your muscles and body but are unable to do so, somatic massage may be a great addition to mindfulness practices and talk therapy. To be clear, somatic massage is not an alternative or substitute for quality psychotherapies like talk therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and others that can be gained from seeing a mental health counselor, psychologist, etc. Somatic massage is an excellent complement to your foundational mental healthcare of choice.
